Thursday, January 01, 2009

Handmade Wedding Favor Boxes

Paper Wrapped Box Favors

Handmade wedding or shower favors are a thoughtful way to show how much you appreciate your attendees. You don’t need to be “super” crafty in order to make this simple and fun design. All you need is a little time, imagination and a few helpful friends or family members.

This favor design, begins with a plain clear box. Clear boxes are available from many online retailers or at craft and container stores. The box can be filled with anything from hard candies, chocolates, mints, tea bags, mulling spices or even hot coco. For this design, I filled the box with 3 bags of herbal tea.

The outer paper and ribbon can be color coordinated to your event and the monogram seal can easily be printed from a sheet of cardstock on an inkjet printer.

Look for bulk ribbon on larger spools in the bridal section of any craft or fabric store. Decorative paper can be purchased in large sheets from art, stationary or paper stores. You can also use scrapbook paper or heavy wrapping paper. The paper in this design was purchased from Paper Source.

When trying to determine the exact amount of supplies needed to make multiple favors, I like to make a sample design and then calculate the materials need based on the sample.

Begin by measuring and trimming your paper to fit around the clear box. Leave a little extra space at the top and bottom for your goodies to peek through. Add an extra half-inch to the width for gluing.

Fill the box with the goodies and seal with the lid.

Center the box on the cut paper, wrap the paper around the box, crease the edges against the box, use a glue stick to seal at the back.

To add a monogram, wrap a ribbon around the box, add a drop of hot glue to the back of the ribbon to secure it to the back of the box. Wrap the sides of the ribbon to the front of the box, overlap them and secure with a drop of hot glue, trim the ends on an angle.

Print a sheet of monograms from an inkjet printer that are small enough to fit in your circle punch.